What Fresh Hell Is This?
First came the news that there’s a computer program that evaluates the merits of a script by comparing its “creative elements” to previously successful films in the same genre to assess how audiences might react to specific scenes. Now we hear that Disney will not finance films costing more than $100 million unless the project can demonstrate its characters can be sold around the world as merchandize. All this does not bode well for originality or creative breakthroughs.
Posted on July 21, 2010
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Inception – Where’s the manual?
Still scratching my head over Inception, Chris Nolan’s cross between a James Bondesque large-scale action thriller and a Matrix-like metaphysical videogame (or possibly Glass Bead Game). It’s absorbing in a three-dimensional chess kind of way, but never really emotionally involving, because the viewer (well, me anyway) is always going “wait a minute. What level are [...]
Posted on July 16, 2010
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Feels Like 1930 All Over Again…
From FDR’s first inaugural address:
Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. [...]
Posted on July 2, 2010
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Tooting My Own Vuvuzela
Many thanks to the SSS clients who wrote into Creative Screenwriting recommending me for the CS Guide to Script Consultants. I made it in with a score of 4.67 out of 5, so now I can hold my head high in script editing circles where, apparently, size matters.
And thanks to Dan [...]
Posted on June 20, 2010
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The Devil’s Work
A new service uses a database to compare a script’s creative elements to those of similar films in order to predict how audiences might react to scenes, as well as to target demographics and potential marketing opportunities. Is this the cutting-edge of the cookie-cutter?
Posted on June 15, 2010
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